Hello!

Sorry for the late blog post. 

My protein is Q9BZP6 CHIA, AKA acidic mammalian chitinase.

For this week, we searched for associated diseases, catalytic activity, tissue specificity, and cofactors. This weeks blog is a bit ramble-y, because I'm just getting my thought process out there. For everyone's sake who is reading this, I'm listing the important stuff first, hahh!

Associated Diseases: None. 

Catalytic Activity: reaction = random endo-hydrolysis of N-acetyl-beta-D-glucosaminide (1->4)-beta-linkages in chitin and chitodextrins.

Tissue Specificity: detected in lung epithelial cells from asthma patients (at protein level). Highly expressed in stomach. Detected at lower levels in lung.

Cofactors: I didn't see anything about cofactors on the page.

According to VarSite, my protein does NOT have any associated diseases. I found this interesting, because my research from last week said that my protein is associated with allergic rhinitis, and otitis media (the first result about acute myeloid leukemia provided pretty much no information, so I don't want to assume too much about that one). My first blog post about this protein also mentions it has interactions in lung cancer, and inflammatory skin and bowel disease, and detected at higher level in asthma patients. I've given this a bit of thought as to why that might be...

Under "Disease Notes" VarSite lists three variants for the section "increased chitinase activity." I think VarSite just doesn't categorize AMCase (acidic mammalian chitinase) as being associated with any diseases because it is expressed in low levels in every person, but has greater expression when people have allergic responses, or develop an infection caused by allergic responses. Ie, AMCase is present as an immune response (remember, my protein also "may participate in defense against nematodes, fungi, and other pathogens" and plays a role in T-helper cell type 2 immune response) and is there to prevent diseases. 

*As a side note (I wish I included this last week) allergic rhinitis is pretty much just allergies that most people get certain times of the year when there's more pollen, or the seasons are changing. Otitis media is an accumulation of fluid behind the eardrum caused by a bacteria or virus from a cold, allergy (aha!) or respiratory infection. 

It's exciting watching all the dots connect while I do research on this protein, especially the last couple weeks reading about diseases. I wonder if it has more reactions in lung cancer, asthma, and skin/bowel diseases because patients with these diseases are more likely to have trouble fighting allergies, and fighting pathogens caused by allergies (refer to my blog post from September 9th). I also keep having to remind myself that this protein is a digestive protein. UniProt says it is highly expressed in the stomach, and mentions bowel disease, but the research I keep finding continuously mentions AMCase being related to the lungs and sinuses. In addition to that, my post from 10/9/2020 that has the chart showing expression of AMCase in different parts of the body shows researchers have continuously tested expression in lungs. Only 3 experiment groups tested the stomach, and 2 of the results did not find any significant expression of AMCase in the stomach. However, one experiment did fine a lot of expression in the stomach. Maybe something I should look into!

Citation

VarSite-Q9BZP6 (CHIA_HUMAN). EMBL-EBI. Retrieved October 20, 2020 from https://www.ebi.ac.uk/thornton-srv/databases/cgi-bin/VarSite/Search.pl.



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